Traditionally, when tools, machinery parts, or other metal or ceramic components were designed and prepared for manufacturing, an extensive process of designing, fabricating, and retooling resulted in an extremely complicated and time consuming endeavor. The sequential iterations required to produce a metal or ceramic article with the proper dimensions and characteristics has become a significant and costly issue, especially considering the complexity of some of the more recently developed articles of manufacture. In part, the long lead times and high costs associated with research and development, when combined with the number of iterative production steps needed for perfecting a metal or ceramic article, has increased the time-to-market and associated costs. This has resulted in delayed profits for many manufacturers, and consequently, foregoing development of products that require costly prototypes.
In response, research and development has been driven to produce rapid prototyping and manufacturing technologies. As such, the development of rapid prototyping techniques has been provided the ability to design and retool prototypes in a much shorter time frame. In part, computer aided design and the ability to generate accurate three-dimensional computer images of the prototypes, sometimes by scanning a physical mockup, has enabled the iterative process to manipulate virtual images rather than the physical mockups.
Also, rapid prototyping has resulted in rapid tooling, which is an indirect method for producing working models from molds generated by the rapid prototyping process. As such, virtual objects can be precisely designed by manipulating computer images, which then are used for fabricating a physical mold before actually preparing the physical object. The physical objects prepared by these processes can then be tested to determine whether or not any one object will function for the desired use.
Additionally, these prototyping techniques have resulted in rapid manufacturing systems. These rapid manufacturing systems have integrated the computer aided prototyping capabilities with computer aided fabrication techniques such as stereolithography. Other rapid manufacturing techniques include jet solidification, three-dimensional welding, shape-deposition manufacturing, and laser-based manufacturing systems. The prevalent laser-based fabrication technologies include selective laser sintering, direct metal laser sintering, and laser engineered net shaping.
Briefly, these laser-based fabrication technologies build a prototype layer-by-layer using lasers to sinter or cure metal or ceramic powders one layer at a time until the article is finished. Moreover, additional sintering and metal infiltration steps may be required to produce a working piece. On the other hand, these laser-based fabrication technologies can be inadequate for preparing complex articles with protruding, overhanging, or other features that would be difficult to prepare one layer at a time. Additionally, these techniques are generally inadequate for manufacturing a high volume of end use articles. Thus, there still remains a need for improvements in rapid manufacturing processes to produce highly accurate prototypes as well as end use articles.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have a fabrication technique for producing and shaping a metal or ceramic article without cutting or milling a hardened metal or ceramic material. Also, it would be beneficial to forego fabrication processes that require a prototype or working article to be manufactured one layer at a time.